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March Transit Ridership Drops 5.9%

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Some have blamed declining transit ridership on low gas prices, but gasoline was about 10 percent more expensive in March 2018 than March 2017, yet March transit ridership was 5.9 percent less than in the same month in 2017. To be fair, March had one fewer work day in 2018 than in 2017, which could account for some of the decline, but January had one more work day in 2018 than 2017, and ridership still declined.

The Federal Transit Administration released March ridership numbers over the weekend. As usual, the Antiplanner has supplemented the raw numbers with a spreadsheet that totals ridership by years (2002-2018) in columns GW through HM; by major modes in rows 2116 through 2122; by transit agency in rows 2131-3129; and by the 200 largest urbanized areas in rows 3131 through 3330.

Previous releases showed that transit has been declining in nearly all major urban areas except Seattle and, in some recent months, Houston. March’s numbers are even more dire, as ridership declined in all of the top 38 urbanized areas including Houston and Seattle. Of the top 50 urban areas, ridership grew only in Providence (by a mere 0.1 percent), Nashville (by a respectable 8.2 percent), Hartford (8.1 percent), and Raleigh (by 3.5 percent). Continue reading →

The Latest Non-Crisis

By | | Transportation
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Transit ridership is declining almost everywhere in the United States, partly because there are increasing alternatives to transit that are more convenient, including increased auto ownership and ride sharing. The Journal of Public Transportation has devoted a whole issue to the future of transit, as if to reassure the industry that it has one (most of the writers were optimistic, but at least one was more skeptical).

So naturally, transit advocates have come up with a new reason to spend more taxpayer dollars on a dying industry: transit deserts. According to someone’s painstaking but questionable analysis, the “demand for transportation exceeds supply” in large portions of major cities, including San Francisco (13.5% of which is supposed to be a transit desert), Philadelphia (8.5%), New York City (7.0%), and Chicago (6.8%).

Supposedly, they used the American Community Survey to count the number of “transit-dependent people” (people over the age of 12 who can’t drive) in each neighborhood and compared it with the transit services to that neighborhood. But the American Community Survey doesn’t ask about transit-dependency, so they had to use proxies that probably miss a lot of things. For example, people who can’t drive may have other people in their households who drive for them, or they may have ready access to taxis or ride-hailing services. Even if transit served their neighborhood, they might not use it. Continue reading →

H+T Not So Efficient

By | | Housing, Transportation
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One of the excuses planners have made for their support of densification is that, yes, housing costs are higher in dense areas, but this is more than offset by lower transportation costs. They call this the H+T Affordability Index, but — as the Antiplanner pointed out nearly five years ago — this claim was based solely on hypothetical and, in some cases, obviously inaccurate numbers.

Despite the lack of any real evidence, density advocates managed to persuade lending authorities to loosen mortgage loan criteria for people locating in dense, transit-rich areas. Since people living in such areas supposedly saved a bundle on transportation, they could afford to spend more on a mortgage.

Now a new study has come out that collected ten years of real data from 11,000 families who moved to compact, transit-rich areas. The study found that some people saved money on transportation, but others spent more, and the net overall effect was a wash. “We conclude that the location affordability literature may significantly overstate the promise of cost savings in transit-rich neighborhoods,” say the researchers. Continue reading →

Wave Bye Bye

By | | Transportation
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As predicted, Nashville voters have rejected a multi-billion-dollar light-rail plan by a margin of 64 to 36 percent. Some people are wondering “Now what?” But the reality is that no major changes are needed to Nashville transit except to figure out a way to back out of long-term obligations in the face of declining ridership.

Less predictable, it appears the Fort Lauderdale Wave streetcar project also died yesterday. The project, which was promoted by Broward County, received federal, state, and local funding. But when construction bids were opened last October, they came in much higher than expected. Skeptical members of the city council got the county to agree that the city could withdraw from the project if it didn’t appear it could be built for less than a 25 percent cost overrun.

The county put it out for bids a second time and the low bid was $2.2 million over the 25 percent threshold. As a result, the city commission voted yesterday to save its money. Continue reading →

The Key to Transit: 240,000+ Downtown Jobs

By | | Transportation
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An op-ed in last Friday’s San Antonio Express-News argues that San Antonio is “one of the least-suited big cities in the world for building rapid transit.” This is because, though San Antonio is the nation’s seventh-largest city, it’s jobs are so spread out that transit just can’t work for most people.

According to Wendell Cox’s report on downtowns, in 2008 transit carried more than 10 percent of people to work in just five metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington. These also happen to be the only metro areas that had more than 240,000 downtown jobs. Transit in Philadelphia, which had just under 240,000 jobs, carried only 9.3 percent of metro-area jobs. San Antonio has only about 60,000 downtown jobs, so is less than a quarter of the way to needing an improved transit system.

Note that Cox is counting jobs in metropolitan areas, which include all the land within the counties surrounding the cities, whether that land is urbanized or not. Most data cited by the Antiplanner is for urbanized areas, which only includes the urbanized land (roughly, land developed to more than 1,000 people per square mile). Transit’s share of commuting will be slightly higher in an urban area than in a metro area. Continue reading →

Watch Out in Minnesota

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
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If you are a critic of light rail, it would probably be a good idea to avoid the Minneapolis-St. Paul area for awhile. It turns out that light-rail operators in Minnesota can commit manslaughter with impunity.

Last July, a Metro Transit light-rail operator ran a red light in St. Paul and killed a 29-year-old man. Metro Transit tried to fire the operator, but the unions forced the agency to keep him on the payroll. If an auto driver killed someone after running a red light, they could be charged with vehicular manslaughter, but when the St. Paul city attorney contemplated charging the light-rail operator, she learned that trains are exempt from traffic codes unless “gross negligence” is involved.
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This exemption must have been passed by the state legislature when it was controlled by the Democratic Party (or, as they call it in Minnesota, the Democrat-Farm-Labor Party). At the present time, Republicans control the legislature, and one, Representative Linda Runbeck, has vowed to “close this loophole” as soon as possible. Until the legislature does so, be extra careful crossing a light-rail line if you are in the Twin Cities.

Is Ride Hailing the Hero or the Villain?

By | | Transportation
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As the Washington Metro system remains in poor shape despite months of trains delayed for maintenance in 2017, the Washington Post is attempting to demonize ride-sharing companies for increasing congestion. DC ride hailing has quadrupled in the last three year, which is “probably” increasing vehicle trips and, by implication, traffic congestion. Note that the paper offers no real evidence that this is true.

What is true is that taxi ridership is down by 31 percent and Metro ridership is down 11 percent since 2015. Does that necessarily translate into more congestion? Certainly, substituting an Uber vehicle for a taxi adds nothing to congestion. And substituting a Lyft vehicle for a transit ride adds to congestion only if the trip takes place during congested periods of the day.

The frequent claims that ride hailing is increasing congestion come from a Boston study that found that 40 percent of ride hailers might otherwise have taken transit. The study also found that most ride hailing takes place after 7 pm, but that 40 percent of weekday ride hailing takes place during rush hours. Forty percent of 40 percent is 16 percent, which means that ride hailing does add some vehicles to the road during rush hour, but not as many as suggested by various media reports. Continue reading →

Big Changes at Amtrak

By | | Transportation
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A severe curtailment of charter trains. New restrictions on hauling private cars. Elimination of dining cars on some trains. Elimination of the Coast Starlight‘s Pacific Parlor Cars, which the Antiplanner called the only redeeming feature of Amtrak’s long-distance trains. Perhaps even phasing out long-distance trains completely.

These are some of the changes taking place under Amtrak’s latest CEO, Richard Anderson, a former Delta Airlines executive. Amtrak’s previous CEO, Wick Moorman, was in charge for only about a year and the main work he did was to shake up the executive suite to make it operate more efficiently. Anderson, however, seems more willing to take on sacred cows in the name of efficiency. If you love intercity passenger trains, however, the things he is doing are likely to alienate many of the company’s political supporters.

The long-distance trains are only the most obvious example. With them, Amtrak serves all but four states. Without them, it serves less than half the states. If less than half of the members of Congress support Amtrak, Amtrak disappears. Continue reading →

2017 National Household Travel Survey

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The average car carried 1.54 people in 2017 while the average SUV carried 1.84 people according to the just-released National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). That’s down slightly from 2009, when it was 1.59 and 1.92 respectively. Historically, auto occupancies have declined in parallel with the decline in household and family sizes; the 2009 survey reported a rare increase but the 2017 decline is not surprising.

The “explore data” button on the NHTS home page allows users to construct a huge variety of data tables. For example, I created a table showing miles of driving per driver by household income and urban area size. Annual miles of driving were roughly the same for all levels of income above $35,000 per year. In smaller urban areas, only people in households with incomes below $15,000 per year did significantly less driving, while people in households with incomes more than $150,000 did a little more driving. Variations by urban area size were small, though large urban areas with heavy rail had about 13 percent less driving than large urban areas without heavy rail; probably that result is driven by New York City.

Vehicle occupancies varied widely by trip purpose, ranging from 1.18 for work trips to 2.57 for recreation trips. However, occupancies seem to be independent of income. Continue reading →

What Does San Antonio Deserve?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Another famous H.L. Mencken quote is, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” The Antiplanner was reminded of this by a headline on the San Antonio Express-News editorial page declaring that San Antonio needs “a transit plan the city deserves.” According to the editorial writer, that plan involves a “rapid transit” system that will “entice people out of their vehicles,” “connect all parts of San Antonio,” and “truly free people from traffic.”

The editorial board must not think very highly of San Antonio. It apparently believes that San Antonio residents deserve to pay billions of dollars in taxes to build an expensive transit system that will be regularly used by less than 5 percent of the people. It also believes they deserve the huge traffic congestion that will accompany construction as well as the lies, cost overruns, and ridership shortfalls that are almost invariably associated with transit megaprojects.

It is also possible that the editorial board simply doesn’t know what it is writing about. For one thing, it seems to think that “rapid transit” means fast transportation. According to the American Public Transportation Association’s Transit Fact Book, rapid rail transit (also known as heavy rail) averages just 20 mph while rapid bus averages less than 11 mph. The average speed of auto driving in San Antonio is 33 mph, so rapid transit is not likely to persuade many to stop driving. Continue reading →